Prosecutors’ strike enters day three

By CHARLES MUSONDA  A COUNTRYWIDE strike by public prosecutors entered the third day yesterday without any sign of ending anytime soon. All cases that were due to take off were adjourned to later dates because of the prosecutors’ absence from the courtrooms while spooky silence greeted litigants, lawyers and other court officers at the generally eventful Lusaka Magistrates’ Court complex. The strike has been initiated by public prosecutors who were transferred from the Zambia Police Service to the National Prosecutions Authority (NPA) in 2016, seeking answers as to who should pay them their benefits for the period they served under the police. They downed tools on Monday morning after learning that the NPA paid only K13, 000 to their former colleague late Nsama Nsama Chipyoka’s family as his benefits from 2016 to December 23, 2020 when he was shot dead in a fracas between the police and UPND cadres. The NPA has told the administrator of Mr. Nsama’s estate to claim benefits for the rest of the years he served from the police service, which has shifted responsibility to the NPA on grounds that public prosecutors were no longer under the police since 2016. Majority of the NPA prosecutors were transferred from the police after some of them had already served for more than 20 years in the service. On Tuesday, incarcerated accused persons, who are awaiting their fate in the subordinate courts, fumed at the public prosecutors’ strike, saying it has prolonged their stay in custody. The inmates were brought to the Lusaka Magistrates’ Court complex for continued trial and judgments in their respective criminal cases, hoping to have their fate known but only to be told that no prosecutor was available to call their cases. They complained that they have been in custody since 2018 and were driven from as far as Chongwe hoping to reunite with their families after the judgments but the strike dealt them a big blow. The accused persons appealed to President Edgar Lungu to intervene in the prosecutors’ strike because it has added more misery to their prolonged incarceration over cases that should have ended way back. They said the strike has now worsened their plight because of congestion and poor diet in prisons among other challenges.